It's a project on the neonbird website involving writing a wish inside a folded note / paper bird & leaving it for a stranger to find. Write the NEONBIRD.COM website on the outside of the note, then take a photo of it & where you left it. Upload the photo to the Made a Bird page.

Darren Hayes of Savage Garden fame, has been working on a solo album called "This Delicate Thing We've Made". It's due for release on August 21st. Check out the video clip on his website for "On the verge of something wonderful" - an uplifting tune sure to be heard on dancefloors around the world. Apparently one of the instruments is a Fairlight CMI synth - nice to see he's supporting such a fine & influential Australian musical instrument. He's touring UK/Scotland in September / October and will be back for an Australian tour in mid October, but if you can't wait that long, he'll be in Sydney at HUM (Oxford St) on Saturday 4th August - his myspace page has latest dates and more details.

I've been trying out some processing apps - Substrate is one of my favourites. written by j.tarbell from complexification.net. it creates a generative image from colours in a specified source image using a simple algorithm.

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"In the early 90s a group of people were attracted to each other because of their shared interest in the idea of time, and in the idea of responsibility for the future. This group of people came to call themselves the Long Now Foundation."

"We felt that there was a need to create some new form of human thinking about Time. We were all aware that everything was getting faster."

"We were also aware as we looked around that most of the ambitions and objectives of people in corporations and in government, even in education had become closer and closer in terms of time so corporations were living in fear of their quarterly results and politicians were living in fear of the next opinion poll. There seemed to be an ever - decreasing horizon into the future and very little encouragement from people in any direction to lay long term plans. No politician wants to start on a plan that doesn't yield results pretty quickly at least within his or her term of office. The worst thing of all is if it yields results in the opposition's term of office and of course the media don't help this by always focusing on things that seem like blue sky projects and criticising them as being stupidly idealistic and pointless."

"We thought that there was first of all the need for an organisation that would celebrate that kind of thinking, that would ally with it, that would support it, that would encourage it and in fact would try to do it itself."

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YouTube CEO Chad Hurley is being questioned at the US Congressional Future of Video Hearing - Box Elder has posted videos from the Hearing on The 463 - Inside Tech Policy blog.. let's see what the outcome will be..

tabletop interface controllers and systems are becoming more popular over the last few years. youtube is helping get the word out there - it was interesting to see a post on Stealth Board linking to the youtube video below and the guys talking about how cool it was and that it's the music of the future & it being alien music. !!
sounds like the genres are crossing over.. !

I'm back in Auckland again for work, and have been catching up on emails over the Easter weekend break. A couple of emails to the Sarai reader list have led me to read about workers in Gurgaon (an industrial city with many call centres near Delhi) and watch videos from Indian women in villages producing their own video magazines.

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The first email was a blog post by Shivam Vij called "Who is a Bairagi?" asking questions about OBC (other backward classes) in India and do people there really know who these people are and how they live. The post was from a journalist who sometimes writes for Tehelka (the people's paper). The National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) has lists of names / castes for people classified as OBC. The Delhi list can be found here and full list for Indian regions found here. There's even a Questionnaire for consideration of requests for Inclusion and complaints of Under-Inclusion of backward classes in Central list - criteria such as Social, Economic and Educational.

"INDIA UNTOUCHED - Stories of a People Apart" is a new documentary directed by Stalin K. and produced by Drishti. Drishti is a a collective of film & documentary makers in India.

Video Volunteers is part of the Creative Visions foundation and aims to setup Community Video Units and train local Community Video Producers to produce video magazines based on local issues which are screened monthly in 25 villages reaching more than 10000 people in these communities. Members of the communities speak about what matters to them and the CVU allows them to have a voice which is then shared with other members of the community.

http://videovolunteers.org/video_change.php
[quote]
The impact of social change media

Video empowers the poor with leadership and critical thinking skills and makes them partners in the development process. Even non-literates can learn to make videos in a matter of months. Here are some success stories from NGOs around the world:

* Bangladesh: Village women submitted video testimonies of the domestic abuse they have suffered and avoided intimidation in the village court.
* India: Rickshaw drivers made articulate video pleas that convinced local banks to give them loans for the first time.
* Mexico: Merely the site of a camera and fear of being caught caused police to withdraw from an illegal raid in Chiapas.
* Nigeria: A cholera outbreak was less severe in villages where a video on clean water was shown.
* Egypt: A group of women abandoned the practice of genital mutilation when they heard the call for change from community members' video interviews.
[/quote]

Other related organisations helping to teach people video making skills in India are :

Barefoot Workshops, a not-for-profit media and music based educational organization where adults and youth are taught video, photography, music, and art as a way to document their surroundings, make change in the world, and most importantly, make change within themselves.

Velugu is the largest poverty project in the state working in over 860 mandals in 22 districts and aims to reach 29 lakhs (1 lakh = 100 000) of the poorest of rural poor. Velugu enhances the poor's capacities to manage their resources and helps access public services. SERP's uniqueness is in the blend of professionals and trained activists working at the grassroots. SERP has committed professionals, Community Coordinators who are working with the poor communities. It also creates the necessary critical mass by building the social capital through facilitating the identification of community activists and trains them as barefoot professionals, as paravets, botanists, social activists etc. This cadre of rural development professionals are managed by the mandal federations.

Creative Visions - The Creative Visions Foundation was inspired by the life of Dan Eldon -- artist, adventurer and activist - who was killed in 1993 while covering the conflict in Somalia as a photojournalist for Reuters News Agency. He was 22. Founded by his family and friends, CVF is a publicly supported 501 (c) (3) organization that supports "creative activists" like Dan -- social entrepreneurs who use media, technology and the arts to create awareness of environmental, social or humanitarian issues -- and inspire positive change.

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teachertube is a youtube-like site for teachers to post teaching videos to help other teachers and students alike. There's lessons for primary school through to high school students as well as help on how to create a screencast or upload a video to the site. The interface is very similar to youtube and is easy to use. Visit http://www.teachertube.com for more details

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.the .product was shown at tp2000 and the demo movie amazed the crowd as it rendered 6 scenes of generated data and 66 textures. visit their site to download the executable file and play the movie. instead of storing the pixels, they stored the commands to generate the textures and scenes and movements within the scenes. and of course they won the <= 64Kb competition with their entry!